Background

The Ontario Endangered Species Act, 2007 (ESA) is a safety net intended to pull species back from the brink of extinction. With Ontario regulation 176/13 Ontario has cut a big hole in the safety net. Not one listed species has full protections under the ESA as it was originally intended. Not one.

Timeline:

May 2007: ESA is passed with broad support from the province’s major political parties and environmental organizations.

June 2012: Following public outrage, amendments are removed from the budget bill.

July 2013: Province guts ESA by introducing a regulation with sweeping exemptions for major industries.

September 2013: Ontario Nature and Wildlands League, represented by Ecojustice lawyers, sue the government to reverse exemptions and defend the ESA.

December 2013: Evidence is filed. This evidence included reports written by scientific experts in two of the 155 endangered and threatened species that have been put at greater risk by the government’s exemption regulation: the American Eel and the Blanding’s Turtle.

April 2014: Scientific experts were cross-examined by MNR lawyers.

Summer 2014: Environmental groups and the government each submitted their written argument known as a “factum” to the court.

January 2015: The final hearing. A panel of three judges, at Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto, heard the case.

May 2015: Divisional Court upholds the provincial regulation that exempts major industries from the Endangered Species Act and allows them to kill endangered and threatened species and destroy their habitats. Wildlands League and Ontario Nature consider their options.

July 2015: Wildlands League and Ontario Nature, represented by Ecojustice lawyers, file a motion to the Ontario Court of Appeal seeking leave to appeal the troubling decision of the Divisional Court.

Endangered Species

The fight for endangered species continues. On November 15, a petition was tabled in the Ontario legislature calling on all members to re-affirm their support for stopping threats to habitat and protecting threatened wildlife.

And our work for caribou is gaining steam again both federally and provincially.

While our application to the Supreme Court of Canada was dismissed, it doesn’t change the fact that MNR made a regulation that exempts major industries from protecting endangered & threatened species and their habitat in Ontario. It’s up to all of us now to work even harder to scrutinize resource development projects and find ways to protect habitat. We’ll be calling on Ontario to uphold its own Endangered Species Act and asking the federal government to step in, under federal species law, to protect habitat that Ontario is refusing to protect under provincial law.

Why we care

When Ontario’s new Endangered Species Act was ushered in in 2007, we applauded it as the gold standard in North America. It’s something we worked really hard on. Protecting endangered species and their habitat is part of our core mandate at CPAWS Wildlands League.

Just six short years later, it turned out that the law to protect endangered species in Ontario was in just as much jeopardy as the species it is designed to protect. That’s when the Ontario government gutted the ESA with sweeping exemptions for major industries. When a government turns its back on its own legislation and on its endangered and threatened species, is when you can count on CPAWS Wildlands League to jump into action.

We are standing up for species that don’t have a voice. We won’t allow the Ontario government to gut protections for species just to save a few bucks and to make life easier for business.

Solution

The Ontario government always has a choice when it comes to species protection. It could withdraw this regulation and fulfill its promise to protect at-risk species by enforcing the Endangered Species Act as intended. That means preventing industrial development, resource extraction or other activities from wiping out vulnerable species.